It’s a team effort running a home and I’m pretty sure that most mothers forget that~

When my oldest was 3 I gave him one responsibility around the house. His chore was to pick up the shoes scattered by the front door and put them in the ‘shoe box’. We called it ‘shoe duty’.  A brown wicker over sized box with a lid that I used to disguise any front door shoe clutter. I figured it was a simple easy job that only included one instruction. “Just pick up any shoes you see and put them here and then you are done.” He followed my directions perfectly and each day when we got home I would remind him to do his ‘chore’ and he would without hesitation.  Call him an over achiever genius of a 3 year old if you must. Personally… I would have to agree with you. Then again… I am his mother.

In all honesty being a single mom makes for a pretty huge job all set on one person’s shoulders and as the years went by with two growing boys I knew I just couldn’t handle everything on my own. I never wanted to take their childhood away from them and defiantly wasn’t running an over worked-under paid sweat shop. In my mind I was doing my job. Being a Mom. Teaching my boys what responsibility was and how they could contribute to the household. It’s a team effort running a home and I’m pretty sure that most mothers forget that. They feel the need to do everything for everyone even at the cost of forgetting themselves.

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Broken~

I read an article the other day that was titled ‘It’s better to be raised by a single Mom.’  I have to tell you… my first response to this was a clap and a smile followed by a big “HELL YEAH IT IS!!” I gave myself a moment to relish in this new found validation that I was doing everything right. That I had made the right choice in raising my children on my own and that all my hard work was going to somehow payoff in the end for the better.

It’s quite the contrast from the conversation I had with my ex-husband as we were going through the divorce. It was my choice to leave therefore he felt the need to look up and inform me of all the statistics showing that children are more likely to be drug users, drop out of school and even go to prison when they come from a broken home. I just kept thinking….  “How much more broken than us can you get?” A broken home doesn’t just mean the parents aren’t together. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to define a broken home based on the environment you are raising your children in rather than how many grown-ups live under the same roof?

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